Coppola didn’t want to remake the Disney film, that’s for sure.

While out promoting her new movie The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola took part in a special “An Evening with Sofia Coppola” event at New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Center this past Tuesday night. During the chat, Coppola opened up about why she left Universal Pictures and Working Title’s adaptation of The Little Mermaid back in 2015.

As reported by Indiewire, Coppola told the audience that her take on The Little Mermaid “wasn’t the Disney version.” She continued, “It was actually the original fairy tale, which is much darker. I thought it would be fun to do a fairy tale. I’ve always loved fairy tales, so I was curious about doing that.”

She was of course referring to the original fairytale penned by Hans Christian Andersen, published in 1837. The tale, which was used as the basis for the iconic animated film, was a whole lot darker than what Disney turned it into – for example, the humanized mermaid is given a knife towards the end and told to kill the prince and let his blood pour down onto her feet, so that she may become a mermaid again!

So what happened with Coppola’s adaptation?

“It became too big of a scale,” she revealed. “I wanted to shoot it really underwater, which would have been a nightmare. But underwater photography is so beautiful. We even did some tests. It was not very realistic, that approach. But it was interesting to think about.”

She added, “For me, when a movie has a really large budget like that, it just becomes more about business, or business becomes a bigger element than art. When it’s smaller, there’s less people involved – it’s not so much at risk, business-wise.”

The Beguiled arrives in select theaters on June 23rd.